SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | Difficulty be damned, they’re going to love it. The Olympic Club, site of this summer’s U.S. Women’s Open, is hard. Really hard. Show up for the first time to the Lake Course and if you break 90, you’re better than most. Break 80 and you feel as though you should buy a round for the house.
If he still was alive you could ask Ben Hogan, who made a mess of the last hole and lost what would have been his fifth U.S. Open to Jack Fleck. Or Arnold Palmer, who shot 39 on the final nine to blow a seven-shot lead to Billy Casper in the 1966 U.S. Open there.
Arnold Palmer hits out of the rough during the 1966 U.S. Open at The Olympic Club. Photo: Courtesy USGA Archive
But the best women in the game are going to love the place because Olympic is not a beat-you-to-death kind of difficult – not a Carnoustie or Whistling Straits that leave you feeling like you’ve gone 10 rounds with a Klitschko; not a TPC Sawgrass kind of tough, where ever...
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